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Baal, Lord of Destruction
Baal is the Act 5 boss and the most difficult in the game. His power is not in his direct offensive abilities; cold wave, yellow hand attack and Baal Nuke. Rather the strength of Baal is his counter, whenever Baal is struck he has a chance to spawn enemies. Baal is also accompanied by a clone which can be identified by the large square brackets [ Baal ]. Baal's clone also shares the counter to summon, whenever the clone is struck the true Baal's healing timer will activate. The true Baal's summons consist of Beetles with hell shock, Bone fetish and Skeleton archers with hell shock that use magic arrow. The clone can summon Wraiths with hell freeze, Ghouls and Wyrms with hell fire. It goes without saying that the fake Baal has nastier counters and should be avoided at all times. The next factor to recognise is the pierce debuff in Baal's chamber, Baal himself casts lower resistance with a -60 pierce to resist all and magic resist, The clone has conviction aura which is also -60 resist all and magic resist. The summons which use hell auras that have a debuff also. A total of ~180 resistance debuff is possible from all 3 sources. The first step to beating Baal is acquiring suitable resistance stacking, you will want heavily stacked resistance in all resists and more in lightning due to the the powerful counters of the hell shock aura beetle summons. How heavily you should stack your resists depends on how well you will avoid some of the 3 potential debuff sources. Due to Baal's Lower resist curse being extremely difficult to avoid a bare minimum of a 60 resist stack will be necessary. I recommend extra max lightning resistance also. The fight against Baal will probably be long so drop a cube of pots in the chamber. The key to winning against Baal is to have a strictly organized battle plan. Baal's counters work on a per hit basis you need to do the most damage you can per counter, therefore the character that deals the most damage per hit will be the one that attacks Baal. You want a maximum of two people at a time attacking Baal, but usually one works better. The best way to severely amplifly the damage you do to Baal is to obtain large quantities of pierce, as an example if Baal has 60% resist to all and you have 40% pierce that is a 100% increase in effective damage to Baal's life. The party setup should be as follows, one attacker directly on Baal who is usually a melee elementalist or a heavy attack caster. If there is a melee tank they should stand directly with the Baal attacker and clear that person of summons. Other wide area of effect casters should hang back and clear the mobs of summons that appear, summoners guard these casters. The ranged area of effect casters should only cast if it is certain not to hit either Baal as it will do more harm than good. Slow steady attacks from the Baal attacker is the way to win, there is 20 seconds on his timer so take your time to clear the summons as you go rather than swamping the room, you may also want to organise for the tank to give Baal a single timer hit when you go to refill your belt from the cube pots. - DreadTalon 20:26, 23 December 2008 (UTC)